It’s 2016, and things are looking pretty grim. As prognosticators of the future, io9 is here to assess the present, and remind everyone that as bad things are, they can always get much, much worse—and they are much, much worse in mirror universes and parallel worlds. Here are 16 alternate realities that make the…

Killing off a major character is great way to up the stakes, create suspense, and show that this story isn't going where you expect. Sometimes, a movie or TV show will go further and cast a famous name or create marketing that implies that a character will be around for a while, only for them to die almost…

Slayer fans, beware - you might have gotten all excited at the news of Fox remastering Joss Whedon's classic TV series for HD formats, but prepare to be disappointed. Turns out that all is not well in Sunnydale when Fox butchers the show to cram it into a 16:9 format.

A stake has one job to do: Stab your errant blood-sucker right through the heart. So while it might look the part, this plush Mr. Pointy from Buffy The Vampire Slayer might not be the most useful thing to have on hand if you find yourself Van-Helsing-ing it up this Halloween.

In 2002, it looked like we might get a Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated series, but it ultimately never materialized. This animated intro imagines the cartoon series we never got—and it's jammed with Buffy Easter eggs.

So this is fun: Professional stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt has a bunch of behind-the-scenes "home videos" on his YouTube channel from his time working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's the kind of stockpile that has a way of devouring your evening whole.

If a TV show nowadays doesn't have at least one big twist now and then, chances are it doesn't remain on the air for long. But only a handful of TV series have the courage to completely transform themselves — to show something so crazy, it irrevocably redefines the show from that point on. We've been lucky to have…

Imagine if Buffy the Vampire Slayer had become a puzzle-solving video game in the vein of Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle. Artist Andrew Scaife gives us screencaps from that imaginary game, placing us in a pixellated version of Sunnydale.

Thanks to the website tiii.me, you can now add up every single hour of your life you've sacrificed to the all-powerful television. Just type in the name of the series, and let the website do the adding — it's horrifying. Feel free to share your numbers in the comments.

It's hard enough to end a TV show with grace and beauty — but it's even harder sometimes to craft a season finale that wraps up a ton of storylines in a wonderful, satisfying way — knowing you have to come back the next year. Including a cliffhanger sometimes! What's the best season finale of any SF or fantasy show?

We've reached the Second Round in our quest to find the ultimate work of science fiction and fantasy, and we've got some brutal match-ups for you to decide. Blade Runner vs. Back to the Future! Star Trek vs. Firefly! Game of Thrones vs. A Wrinkle in Time! Sandman vs. Buffy! Dune vs. Ender's Game!

Some villains strive for wealth and power. Some villains
strive for glory. But a surprising number of villains are motivated solely by
their tangled relationships with the hero. These are love-hate relationships,
in which the villain just wants to impress the hero or spend quality time
together. Here are the 12 most…

Non-super-powered sidekick no more! When Dark Horse releases Buffy the Vampire: Season 10 #1 in March, it's Xander who will be leading the Scooby Gang — or more accurately, Nicholas Brendon will. The actor has joined the comic's writing team, and we interviewed him to discuss the return of Dracula, Giles' new affinity…

Romance abounds in fiction — and science fiction and fantasy are full of epic romances too. But sometimes, it's just a bad idea. We see so many fictional couples that the writers clearly thought were a great idea, but are actually disasters. Here are the main signs that a fictional romance is a terrible, awful, bad…

Today's discussion of Sansa Stark raised some good questions about why certain characters are or aren't hated, and how much that hate is actually warranted. Which character do you think gets way too much hate and grief from people? To start the Open Channel, let's take a look at the proto-Sansa — Dawn from Buffy the…

We thought the similarities between the "going off to college" storylines on Buffy the Vampire Slayer season four and Vampire Diaries season five were all just on the surface... until we saw last night's episode. Holy cow, this show is biting Buffy's ideas big time.